Joe Biden
AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Listen to “Spike in guns and ammo sales amid pandemic || 1370 WSPD Toledo || 8/10/20” on Spreaker.

[This exchange begins at the 8:36 mark of the audio file at the link above.]

Q: Emily, one of the concerns I’ve got over President Trump’s executive orders issued over the weekend affecting the payroll tax, if that’s upheld, if that survived lawsuits. I did find some sections of the US code that makes this legal for the President to order.

Unfortunately, I also think it sets a bad precedent where a new President who may not be as friendly towards the Second Amendment as Donald Trump has proven to be could come in and order an executive order increasing taxes on ammunition or gun sales. And just the same way, have the same effect, without having to go through Congress.

A: Yeah, that is really scary. Now the good news is the Supreme Court, although they have been really unwilling to take up new Second Amendment issues, even in our new composition of the Court, our most recent new composition which we sure thought they would be far more likely to take up Second Amendment cases. Now, even though they’ve not been as friendly as we thought, they are and remain likely to take up issues of executive authority.

So that is good news and we can only hope that if a new President oversteps bounds, tries to tax firearm manufacturers out of business and tax Americans out of their Second Amendment rights, that that is something the Supreme Court would take up and hopefully put the kibosh on pretty quickly.

– Attorney Emily Taylor in Spike in guns and ammo sales amid pandemic

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

112 COMMENTS

    • …and that POS Roberts will let him do it, “to protect the integrity of the high Court” or some such rot…

      • Lol. The Democrats would still, in that scenario, Pack The Court.

        They’ve already stated they’re going to anyway.

      • Just stopping by to remind everyone that ‘Goof…PR’ is a limp wristed fancy man who tosses more salad than Olive Garden.

        • Look, I’ve already told you, I won’t go out with you, no matter how much you insist that you give the best head… 😉

    • Let’s see…obiden is going to Raise Taxes. Exactly what part of “Raise Taxes” don’t you understand?
      The marxist democRat Party Platform is “From each according to his means to each according to his needs.”
      The soros/bloomberg money is to get democRats elected. After that the money comes from Y O U.

      TRUMP/PENCE 2020.

      • Only Congress can enact taxes yada yada. If voters are stupid enough to vote biden and if little nancy gets stronger in the house and another Romney or two finds their way into the senate perhaps that may end the bickering. However if you don’t vote, you don’t get your circle to vote and you don’t TRUMP/PENCE your posts you are only satisfying your need to hear yourself speak.

      • I have all the authority I need to fix the tax laws that the lazy Democrat Congress just cannot do. That changes if you elect Biden because he just isn’t smart like me. You have to be real smart to write a good executive order. That’s why I’m the first President to use the power smartly and bigly.

      • Oh I always thought it was from the workers regardless of their needs to the politicians according to their wants.

    • The biggest difference here is that the payroll tax is never even mentioned in the Constitution, where the right to keep and bear has an entire Amendment devoted to it alone.

      • That’s not very encouraging. “The Constitution doesn’t mention it so we can do whatever we want” plus “The Constitution means whatever we want it to.”

      • The President can’t impose new taxes. The Constitution clearly gives that authority to the Congress in Article 1, Section 8. What he can do is announce that he won’t enforce any penalties for not paying those taxes. If Biden wins, he won’t need to raise taxes on guns via executive order. If he wins, he’ll probably have majorities in the House and Senate, which will pass the taxes on their own, and he’ll sign them into law if he can remember his name and how to spell it.

  3. The answer to that question is an easy and simple “NO”. Only congress can enact taxing policy, an executive order attempting to do the same would be illegal.

    • Sorry you’re wrong that congress is the only branch of the federal government with taxation powers.
      The Supreme court can and has enacted a tax upon the American people. It is called Obama care.

      • The Supreme Court did not enact the tax. It was already in the legislation. What really happened was Roberts said that because it was administered by the IRS, it was a tax, not a penalty.

        Stop spouting ill-informed nonsense. That’s what the hoplophobes do, because they have no real facts on their side.

      • And it was through uphold congressional legislation, it was not upholding and illegal executive order.

        It is important that we understand what The Constitution says, taxing authority power is delegated to the legislative branch ONLY.

        • Sorry to burst your bubble but the Mandate for those without insurance was originally written into the legislation as a penalty. The supreme court changed the definition to classify it as a Tax. Look it up.

        • You’re just not paying attention, are you. The “penalty” was included in law ENACTED BY CONGRESSIONAL ACTION. Do you understand the difference between congressional legislation and and executive action? Apparently you do not.

        • There is no penalty, never has been. CJ John Roberts, ALL BY HIMSELF, declared it a tax, thereby avoiding finding the entire law (act) unconstitutional before it ever went into effect. Is there something preventing you from understanding English? THERE IS NO PENALTY, ENACTED BY ANYBODY!!

        • @Bigus Dinkus. You obviously have no comprehension skills. The Supreme Court changed the definition of the Penalty to a Tax. Because the Penalty was illegal under the Constitution. Which made it moot. The Supreme Court made up the “Tax” because there was no supporting Tax legislation in the law. Without it’s actions the “Tax” didn’t exist.

  4. If Biden gets elected…there will be a run on guns and ammo like never before from November to January…
    Glad I have a good stock of both.
    If Trump gets in…not so much…
    But eventually we will get a Dem sweep of house/senate/President…and watch out then…

    • “there will be a run on guns and ammo like never before from November to January…”

      Ending in January?

      The run will continue for the next 4 years if (when) he wins. Because in that time frame, there will be another tragedy, they will exploit it, and some conservatives will join them in stealing our rights…

    • When Trump wins this time, the Democrat Party is going to commit Hara Kiri, we’ll be done with them.

  5. You mean, can Kamala Harris…. Biden sitting behind that desk is just for show not four go… she is the right hand of Michelle Obama

  6. They won’t need to tax anything, I’m already seeing .223 running from eighty cents to two dollars a round… fifty cents a round for .22 LR?… and ARs are getting harder to find AND more expensive… Guess I’ll be cutting “Happy Hour” down to happy 1/2 hour and start conserving my stash, 15/20 thousand rounds all of a sudden doesn’t look all that secure……

    • “fifty cents a round for .22 LR?”

      Hell, that’s tempting me to sell some of my newly-acquired stash.

      But I won’t.

      I’ve been using filled ammo cans as ‘Freedom Kettle-Bells’… 🙂

    • I hear ya. I wanted to do a state police sponsored tactical carbine course for a refresher course for myself. Since I am self sponsoring I am on my own for ammo and gear. The recommended ammo count for this course is a 1000 rounds of 5.56mm which is giving me heart burn currently . I should have bought more 6 months ago, the idea of burning 1000 rounds and replacing them at the current prices is a bit rough.

      • The only thing that has seemed to hold kind of steady is 7.62×39… just ordered 1280 rounds of Tul @ .47 cents per…

        • Not sure how either, I know a load of people who have built or bought the weapons that eat it recently.

          Also, hush! *whispers conspiratorially* Don’t tell everyone that, I like the prices just as they are.

        • @ that price your paying way to much. SGA ammo has 7.62x39mm at .29 cents per round for a 1000 rounds

          • What, wolf? I wouldn’t use their shitty ammo for a paper weight.. Tried it once, split cases, FTF… I just passed on 1000 rounds at 28.5 cents from bulkammo.com…. Bear, Tul, Red Army.. Never again Wolf…

        • Rural PA so it isn’t to shabby. The local township police laugh at me everytime I go in for fingerprints for my next stamp. They just ask what I got this time.

  7. We don’t need no stinking taxes and all of the court hassles you gun nuts would throw at us, we’ll just turn Beto loose and if he can’t get it done we can always hook Eric up with a few tactical nukes and by God he’ll take care of you. C’MON MAANNNN.

    • Good job with doing Biden’s brainstorming for him ;
      Executive order, extra taxes on guns and bullets that’s not a tax , hmm, hadn’t thought of that,
      Thanks POTG

    • Jomalla
      Your post makes no sense.
      What are you talking about?
      Eric?
      Nukes?
      Please explain.

      • For those of you that have been living under a rock for the past decade or so, a refresher.. In November 2018, Democratic U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell suggested launching nuclear weapons against gun-owners who refused to hand over or sell semi-automatic rifles to the U.S. government.

        And it’s JOM—(A not O)–LLA (as in JO-e/ka-MALLA HAR-ris/bi-DEN) C’mon Mann.

    • JOMALLA HARDIN?

      Is there any chance you are related to Celeste Hardin?

      “I gots to know”… 😉

    • Please, do turn Beto loose. Send him out all by himself to confiscate guns. And, please, send him to my house. I’ll happily give him my guns, bullets first.

  8. In principle, only Congress can establish or modify a tax.

    In practice the executive branch executes collection of that tax. So a president could, say, direct the IRS to not collect a given tax (or, more precisely, defund all effort for collection) such as the payroll tax. This is not the same as changing the tax rate or the fact that it’s due; Congress would still need to pass a law making the payroll tax zero for the period of time it wasn’t collected, and mitigate any associated non-payment penalties.

    For comparison, only a city council (or board of supervisors, etc.) can defund the local PD, but the mayor can order the PD to stand down even if they are being paid.

  9. Considering that Biden’s plan is to get AR’s and Magazines classified as NFA items and apply the 200$ stamp to them, he could theoretically try this, though it would be met with rampant resistance.

    The question is, can he convince the ATF to do a more extreme version of legal gymnastics to find a way to make an AR/magazine NFA? We didn’t think the ATF could do it on braces, but here we are.

    Hopefully, one of the Brace Ban Court Cases makes its way high enough in the courts to be shot down before the next president decides to “do something” and “let the courts sort it out”.

    Other than that, unless the ATF is involved, I cannot imagine gun vendors being even willing to apply a tax on firearms/ammunition sales if there is a public narrative that it might be illegal. There is widespread noncompliance of parts of Washington I-1639 outside of Seattle metro, so I imagine you would see much of the same nationwide.

    • I assume you meant bump stocks. Or has there been some solid action against braces that I missed?

      • Nothing since Rep. Geatz’s publicity stunt a while back, AFAIK. I search every few weeks for later developments and come up empty. Of course, he can claim that his letter scared them into dropping it….

    • easier to pass a new AWB…after all, it has been done before…and passed judicial review…

  11. Wow, it’s almost like Trump’s authoritarian actions as president might be used as justification for a similar expansion by subsequent presidents with whom we me not agree.

    Who would have though that actions to undermine Congressional authority would have negative long-term consequences?

    I mean, it’s almost like those Republicans who opposed executive fiat might have been on to something when they said Trump was a dangerous threat to the conservative cause in the long run.

    • The most dangerous thing to the conservative cause in the long run is conservatives.

      Conservatives don’t rock the boat; they prefer relax into the status quo. Meanwhile, progressive “liberals” are always pushing the envelope so that whenever so-called conservatives are back in the driver’s seat, they’re preserving a status quo that reflects someone else’s agenda. Wash, rinse, repeat.

      Conservative politicians just roll over whenever the press gets loud: “If we do something they don’t like, they’ll call us names. That would be uncivil, and we’re not uncivil jerks, so we’ll just go along with it.” The simps fail to fight, and uncivil jerks and leftist ideologues control the national conversation. Wash, rinse, repeat.

      This is how you get Trump — the only guy with an R next to his name who is willing to fight. But a lot of conservatives are still convinced that this time, Lucy really will let Charlie Brown kick that football.

  12. Kamaltoe er slow Joe can try…try to enforce that illegal order. Fun times with guns😏

  13. In the hypothetical scenario of the Democrats sweeping it all in November; Biden as POTUS, Democrat House, and Democrat Senate,…….they will then Pack the SCOTUS by adding more Judges (they’ve already stated that they will),……..and then Biden and Harris will rule as 2 petty dictators.

    • Plans include many other extreme changes as well that would guarantee democrat control for a generation or more. I believe they’ll need more than just a slim majority to be able to enact that.

  14. Remember when congress couldn’t pass something for years so Obama used his pen and phone to do it for them? Then the Supreme Court wouldn’t let the next president undo an unconstitutional EO because…he didn’t have a good enough reason to do so?

  16. Time to establish precedent. Trump needs to make state sales tax on ammo illegal and make health insurance premiums federal income tax deductible in the same executive order. Let the President reduce healthcare costs and let the democrats sue to increase healthcare costs cause gunz.

  18. Trump is restrained by law. Democrats do not consider the law to be applicable, so “President Biden” could theoretically do anything he wants, if the practically nonexistent opposition to the past several years of left wing governmental misconduct is any indicator.

  19. Could a President Biden Tax Guns and Ammo by Executive Order?

    No and yes and no. He can write and proclaim anything he feels like writing and proclaiming. Which would be rapidly followed by lawsuits and the Supreme Court would give the President an education on which branch of the government writes the tax laws.

    So , yeah, sure he could try. It wouldn’t stick if he did try.

  20. Couldn’t most semi auto guns be banned because of the bumpstock ban, as federal law stipulates that any gun that is “readily convertible“ to be a “machinegun” are treated as machineguns, and now that the atf decided that stocks = machineguns, couldn’t they at some point decide that all ARs and AKs are “readily convertible“ machineguns and end up getting banned?

    • Never seen an AK with a bump stock.. And ARs have always been “convertible” if you can get the parts, in fact companies are selling three round burst kits now.. (of course that is IF your gun was already equipped and proper stamps are in hand “wink-wink”)

      • I mean yes the burst/auto parts kits are being sold, but since it involves machining and drilling the receiver, doesn’t that make it not considered “readily convertible”?

        • but since it involves machining and drilling the receiver

          Don’t know what kit you are talking about, my experience was was a pretty simple matter of replacing the trigger and hammer… No machining or drilling

        • From what I recall, you’re talking about two different things. The original version of select fire used a receiver with additional holes (hence “machining”), but there were also such things as “drop in auto sears”, which were just what they sounded like, just like a drop in trigger, remove all things trigger and replace with a new unit, and you have select fire with no drilling. About a jillion were produced and registered, then locked up in a safe deposit box, since they cost around $200, plus $200 tax stamp, and will convert any AR to a $20,000+ select fire LEGALLY! Selling one for $10,000-15,000 would take about 3 moments.

      • A tiny piece of spring steel shaped like an L underneath the trigger disconnecter tensioned just right will make a MAK90 slam fire brrrrrrrrrrp

    • You don’t need any parts to bumpfire a semi-auto rifle. It’s a technique first and a gadget second. The gadget is supposed to make it easier. But it is such a simple thing, anyone can make a bump stock out of very basic materials that can be found in any home improvement store for under $10.

      The AR-15 is especially easy to do this

    • theoretically…but the major imbalance in numbers argues against it…noncompliance would be massive…and just how many bump-stocks have been turned in or destroyed?…this idea was bandied about back in the eighties…and rejected for just that very reason….

  21. If elected Joe braindead won’t serve 6 months into his first term as he will be declared BrainDead.

    • Which will leave us with konfiskatin (I’ll give congress 100 days then I’ll do it myself) Kamala with HER VP (Hillary? BERNIE? POCAHONTAS ? NANCY?) fun times and happy days…. thank God AOC still has three or four years til she is old enough..

    • anyone who chooses to vote democratic has no illusions who they are actually voting for…and she’s as phony as a three dollar bill…they’ve already smelled her out in her home state…now it’s up to the rest of us to do the same…..

  22. You can’t tax a right. Remember “The poll tax” used as a way to keep the poor from voting.

  23. The only way the Democrats can win is to steal it with their mail in ballot conspiracy. They never came up against a stable genius like me. The mailboxes have been rounded up. The sorting machines pulled and the electric wires removed from the rooms so they can’t be put back. Those socialists couldn’t compete with me at election stealing on their best day.

    • EXCELLENT!! Only around 6 months until the opening of the Trump 2024 campaign! If DemoCommies can ignore the Constitution, so can we!

  25. President Harris will sign lots of EOs Around May next year as soon as Joe is out of the way. Letting Willie Brown violate her will seem like a great idea for her career.

    • I already promised Kammy I’d step aside as soon as I took the oath and signed the order to publicly execute Orange Man… either by a massive exposure to the WuFlu OR OD on his hydroxychloroquine… She’s picking her VP at this very moment..

  26. Taxation without representation? That started a revolution once and we won. Are the British back again? They have no power here unless they are The Beatles.

    • Taxation without representation

      technically you have a representative, whether YOU voted for him/her or not..

    • Right, but we’ve been getting taxed illegally since immediately after the tea party, so…

      All in the name of modernization. Society sucks. Natives live off the land. We live on it. I’d be all for going back to frontier days, but I don’t think the rest of the world enjoys it very much. Just look at them, face down as they walk, cell phones in hand commenting on r/politics.

  27. I think the better way to ask it would be.
    Could a President Kamalface Hairyazz Tax Guns and Ammo by Executive Order?
    As Biden won’t last 6 months in office.

    • Kameltoe Harris will certainly raise taxes, the socialists need all that money for the “free” stuff.

  28. he’s biden his time until she takes over. Normally I do not vote however this time as much as I do not like Trump, “orange man bad” gets mine this time.

    • That’s what this once great country has become sadly, you must pick the lesser of 2 evils. Trump really is a fraud,, and acts like a social media drama queen, it’s embarrassing but Biden president makes me want to puke just to think about it.

  30. I’m building a AR style 9mm with 8.5in barrel and a brace that is less than 13in trigger to end of brace. Have ATF made them illegal? I haven’t heard anything thing that they are outlawed?

  31. Biden cannot tax anything by EO. The authority to lay taxes is given to Congress in the Constitution.
    Article 1 Section 8.
    Section 8
    Clause 1
    The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

    President Trump’s EO did not change the payroll tax, only defer it. The tax is still law.

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